The special counsel investigating Trump issues his first subpoenas and the Capitol assault committee will recommend criminal charges for the attack

The special prosecutor of the Department of Justice who is leading the new investigation of Donald Trump, Jack Smith, issued a subpoena on Tuesday

officials from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona about their communications with the former president and his electoral team. and allies, within his investigations into a possible plot to annul the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost cleanly to Democrat Joe Biden.

It is the first known subpoena for Smith, who was appointed in November by the Justice Department to lead two lines of investigation against Trump, for his role in the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and in the alleged efforts to quash the electoral result;

and for taking secret government papers to his Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving the White House.

This Tuesday it was also learned that the House of Representatives committee investigating the assault on the Capitol is inclined to send the Department of Justice the order to present criminal charges.

The Democratic representative Bennie Thompson, who revealed these intentions, did not reveal, however, who the people affected could be or if Trump would be among them.

[Trump asks to annul the Constitution and be named president]

Trump, at an event on November 18 in Florida.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

“The committee will make decisions in the next few days,” he told the press during an act honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol from the attack by violent Trump supporters in January 2021.

The leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate awarded the highest honor in Congress, the Gold Medals, to the agents who acted on January 6 against the violent.

In addition, medals will be placed at the Capitol Police headquarters, the Capital Metropolitan Police Department, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Institution.

The president, Joe Biden, said that this badge will be hung "so that all visitors understand what happened."

[Trump's taxes already in the hands of House Democrats after court battle]

The Republican representative Liz Cheney, who is part of the congressional committee on the assault on the Capitol, had already advanced in recent months that criminal charges could be recommended based on the extensive evidence that its nine members have gathered since it was formed in July 2021. In any case, it would be a recommendation to the prosecutors, which does not imply that they later file criminal charges, something that will depend on them;

Precisely to make this decision, the investigation led by Jack Smith within the Department of Justice itself was opened.

Trump has denied all the allegations, calling it a "witch hunt" while continuing to spread false information about a non-existent "mass fraud" in the 2020 election.

This Saturday he even advocated annulling "all the rules, laws and regulations" of American democracy, including the Constitution, to annul the 2020 elections and be appointed president.

The assailants to the Capitol were emboldened by these false voter fraud theories, which Trump highlighted in a rally outside Congress on January 6 before the attack. 

The House panel, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, has sought to create the most complete record possible of what transpired on that day, which lawmakers have called Trump's "stunning betrayal" of his oath of office in a unprecedented attempt to prevent his defeat from being certified.

From the White House to Republican leaders reject Trump's unusual approach to the Constitution

Dec 5, 202200:41

[Jury deliberations begin in Trump Organization tax fraud trial]

The committee built its case against the former president in a series of public hearings that began in early June and included live and video testimony from Trump family members, his White House aides and other allies.

At the end of the last hearing, the committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump for his sworn testimony.

In response, Trump filed a lawsuit against the panel and failed to appear.

With the committee disbanding at the end of the year, lawmakers would have no expectation of getting Trump to testify on time.

But a recommendation to the Justice Department that he be criminally investigated, as Cheney and others have suggested, could be a forceful closure to the work that has been done.